Bloody Roar Extreme Review

There are two types of people in this world. Those who are creepily obsessed with anthropomorphic cartoon characters and the rest of us. If you happen to fall into the former category, Bloody Roar Extreme is likely to be your favorite game of all time. If you fall into the latter category, it won't.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the series, the Bloody Roar games have been around since the early days of the Playstation, where its better than average for the time fighting system and "Beast Change" gimmick helped the series rise above the pack of mediocre console fighters of the day.

Time passes, though, and each subsequent sequel has had a tougher time establishing itself as a top-tier fighter. While the series does get better with each passing iteration, the improvements are in fairly small increments. Instead of making any major improvements the basic gameplay, Hudson and Eighting seem content to just add a few new moves and characters to the mix, improve the graphics and call it a day. As a result, every Bloody Roar game still plays an awful lot like the original.

Bloody Roar Extreme is either the third or the fifth in the series, depending on your reckoning. You see, Extreme is a slightly enhanced port of the GameCube's Bloody Roar: Primal Fury, which is in turn a slightly enhanced port of the PS2 version of the game, Bloody Roar 3.

With an extra character over the GameCube version (3 more than the PS2 one), improved graphics and the addition of CG endings for each of the characters, Extreme is easily the best version of the game yet. Does this mean that you should buy it? That depends on how attracted you are to women who can turn into bats or bunny rabbits at will.

Gameplay

Anybody looking for a deep, complicated fighter along the lines of Virtua Fighter or Soul Caliber is likely to be a little bit disappointed with Bloody Roar's gameplay mechanics.

As 3D fighters go, Bloody Roar Extreme is definitely on the simple side of things. Nowhere is this more evident than in the game's control scheme, with its whopping two attack buttons. Here's how it works: X punches and A kicks. Y handles both blocking and throwing while B activates your Beast Change. Other than using the L and R triggers to walk towards and away from the camera, that's all you get.

As you might imagine, this dearth of attack buttons means that there just aren't that many attacks per character. Basically you've got a different kick and punch for each direction you're pressing on the d-pad, and a handful of special moves per character. Compared to the extensive move lists found in most other modern fighters, that 's just not enough.

The only real strategy to be found in the game lies in the proper use of your Beast Change. In order to transform into your more powerful animal self, you've got to fill up the energy bar at the bottom of the screen. In traditional fighting game style, this is done by either doing attacks or being attacked. Once you're able to transform, you've got to think wisely about how and when to switch. For example, if you're almost dead, you've got to decide whether to go ahead and change or save the transformation to use in the next round.

As your beast self, you're significantly more powerful than you were, and you have access to a devastating special move. Of course, if you use this special move, you revert back to your human self. Is it worth the risk? These are the kind of dilemmas that keep Bloody Roar from completely collapsing under the weight of its absolutely awful control scheme.

Another interesting aspect of Bloody Roar is the ring out system. A wall surrounds each of the game's levels, so in order to knock somebody out you've got to first knock down parts of the wall by hitting your opponent into them.

This tends to create situations where there is one or two holes in a wall, and you and your opponent are each trying to position one another such that you'll be able to punt them out of the ring with a single swift kick. This system goes a long way towards eliminating the "accidental" ring outs that can be so frustrating in other games.